Recap and Menu – Page 8 – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + what we ate: The week before Christmas

Happy New Year. And just like that we are in a new year, another revolve around the sun. I feel like I am just now digging my self out of all the mounds of wrapping paper and packing material and dirty dishes and carbs that is the wake of Christmas. All evidence of our good fortune to have gifts to wrap and food to dirty dishes, so I can’t see it all as too much of a burden to reset.

The week that was before Christmas was… very full. Perhaps a little too full in some areas. I was reading my journal entry from the week before Christmas last year, 2021, and this reflection struck me:
“I feel like I’m doing that thing where I do a lot of last minute Christmas buying, and it’s a little out of control… There are an infinite number of things that are designed to be minorly useful but majorly appealing in the Christmas rush. I just need to resist. And think what would actually add value if given right now. Too many presents dull the worth of each thing. On paper, two or three toys doesn’t seem like a lot, but on Christmas Day, it is enough.”
As I ventured out to stores last week, I kept thinking of those thoughts that 2021 me wrote. It seemed like there was a huge list of stocking stuffers, groceries, and last minute presents to procure. And at one point, I simply told myself, “Okay, I’m done.” The mental and financial wells were just tapped. So on Thursday I decided that I was not going to anymore stores – I don’t know by what industrial complex I was feeling pressured to keep going to stores, but I was ready to stop listening to it. There were still things on my shopping list, but I realized that list was so arbitrary. And the list didn’t make Christmas, or family memories, or times of peace and relaxation. So I migrated some of the things on that list to the birthday list – because they were fun ideas that I thought the kids might still enjoy – or I put them on the “everyday” list – because they were necessary things that I masqueraded as Christmas present, but which I should just buy for the kids anyway because they needed them – and I stayed home and made three batches of cookie dough. And went to the theatre with friends. And went to the movies with the family. And went to church. And savored the biting cold. And was grateful that I wasn’t trying to drive or fly anywhere.

Fun and Festive things from the week:
–Celebrating our anniversary. Our sitter had to cancel at the last minute because she wasn’t feeling well, and I was a little bummed. But the ten year old, made us a banner and cut out paper hearts and put them on the couch in front of the TV and told the Husband and I that we could have a movie date at home and she would take care of the two little kids. And she did. I had already made dinner, so she fed the kids and kept them entertained and brought the Husband and I dinner in the basement as well. It was the sweetest thing. The Husband and I watched See How They Run, an Agatha Christie inspired murder mystery set against a production of The Mousetrap. It was highly entertaining and funny and so very meta. Then after the movie, instead of turning on something else on to watch, we decided to turn off the tv and just read books while sitting on the couch together as the ten year old (tried to) put her siblings to bed. It was not the evening that we planned, but it was pretty nice. (And a lot cheaper than what we had planned.)

She even made a banner! And actually it’s our 13th Anniversary.

– Zoolights. We met up with some friends for the Zoo’s holiday light display. This was the first year that the Zoo has held Zoolights since the pandemic, and people had to sign up for tickets in advance, which made it a lot less crowded than it used to be. That certainly made navigating the zoo a lot easier than in the past. The lights were beautiful, and there were some new lantern animals. We were a little disappointed, though, that the animal houses weren’t open; in the past, some of the animal houses were open so we could see animals as well as lights. Oh well. Things change. It was a pretty late night. After we spent a few hours walking through the lights, we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner, and by the time we got done with dinner it was almost 10:00pm and we still had about a 45 minute metro ride home. I will say the kids were all real troopers with all the walking and the late dinner – they were a little restless at dinner, but didn’t complain. They were probably too tired to whine. On the way home, the baby sat on my lap for the train ride home. And fell asleep. Then while sleeping, peed on my lap. It was probably all that water she drank during dinner. Any thought I had that she might be ready to night time toilet train… well that answered that. When we got home around 10:30p, I carried her home – the Husband offered, but I figured only one of us needed to be pee soaked. But even with arriving home pee soaked, it had been a pretty wonderful evening.

–Making Holiday Cards with the Kids. I wanted the kids to do something hands on for the teacher cards, so I used painter’s tape to create some images on cards and had the kids paint over it. Once the cards were dry, we peeled off the painter’s tape and voila! Some of the cards turned out a little runny because the baby spilled an entire container of water all over the cards, but I think it gave the cards and nice blurred quality. I always like this technique because it’s pretty simple to execute, but I think highly effective visually. The kids even made some of their own designs too.

– Seeing a musical. I went to see a production of Beauty and The Beast with my friend and her kids. Originally the ten year old was supposed to come, but she wasn’t feeling well, so I took the five year old and the three year old instead. The three year old did pretty well, although she got upset when Belle and her father was separated and spent the rest of the show cuddling on my lap. Afterwards she said, “I like the show, but I don’t want to go back there again.” Not sure how to interpret that. I had a good time, though. I did feel like the show itself is a touch too long – it’s pretty much the Disney movie with four or five additional songs, and it seemed like it took a long time for Belle and the Beast to meet and start their journey. Despite that, the production felt really special because of the casting of the leads; Belle was played by a self described “queer curvy” Black actor, and the Beast was played by an actor who had only one leg. (There’s a story in People Magazine about the production.) And at first, I though they were going to take a “blind” approach to the casting, where we weren’t supposed to notice that one actor had a peg leg or one actor was a different body type than what you would usually see onstage, but then I noticed they changed some of the words (replaced “fair” with “fine”, took out places where the word “fat” was used), and then there was a moment (spoiler here… ) at the end, when Gaston and the Beast are fighting when Gaston grabbed the Beasts artificial leg and it was just stunning. You could see that this production wasn’t pretending that the two people playing the lead were stereotypical fairy tale storybook leads – their idea of “Beauty” was based on more than superficial appearances. It was a really bold statement to make onstage.

–Celebrating Hannukah with friends – The friends we went to the theatre with were Jewish and they invited us back to their house for dinner and to light Hannukah candles after the show. It was a lovely evening with friends, especially since our kids are all of the age where they can just play with each other and the adults can talk and have a beer and not constantly worry about what the kids were doing. And to top it all off, my friends even gave me an early birthday present – a camping chair! They are avid campers and every time I go camping, I have always borrowed a chair from them, and now I have my own. I’m so delighted that my friend and I can now sit in matching camp chairs by the camp fire.

–Seeing It’s A Wonderful Life in the movie theatre. There is movie theatre near us that was showing classic Christmas movies and on Christmas Eve, they had a matinee of It’s A Wonderful Life, so we got tickets and went to see it. We always watch It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, and I thought this might be an extra special way to watch it. We took the bus to the movie theatre – discovering a new to us bus route that is a block closer to our house than the bus route we would have usually taken to the theatre – that felt pretty awesome, to discover a new bus route. And we got popcorn and soda – though I accidentally dropped my popcorn on the floor as I was leaving the concession stand, and I almost had a meltdown over that tiny thing, but the theatre gave me another bag to make up for it.
A nice touch was that the film was introduced by Jeremy Arnold, a film historian, who talked about the history of the movie. He pointed out how there is a film noir tone to the movie and how Frank Capra’s movie encompasses so many film styles, which I had never thought about before, but it did made me appreciate the craft of the film a little more. Also – fun tidbit, the film won a technical Oscar for an innovative way of creating snowfall. There sure is a lot of snowfall in the movie! The kids seemed to have a good time, though the three year old eventually ended up in my lap again. And fell asleep. And then peed in my lap. Perhaps having her split a large soda with me and her brother wasn’t such a great idea. So yes, twice in one week, a sleeping child peed in my lap.
It was pretty bitterly cold when we left the movie, and I hadn’t brought a change of clothes for the baby, so I gave her my puffer vest to wear in hopes that she wouldn’t be too cold in her pee soaked pants. We popped into the mall in hopes of buying her some pants, but then the husband saw that the next bus home was arriving in two minutes, so we decided just to get on the bus. At which point I discovered that I had left my phone at the movie theatre. The Husband and kids got on the bus and I went back to try to find my phone, which at first no one had seen and I was starting to panic, but then the lady at the ticked desk asked around and someone did end up having it. All in all, it was a lot of excitement for one afternoon.

–Our Christmas Eve Tradition. The Husband’s family had a tradition of reading The Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve. (I guess technically it’s A Visit from St. Nicholas, but no one calls it that, do they?) My late mother-in-law had about a dozen copies of the poem in picture book form and when she passed, we brought them all into our home. Our Christmas Eve tradition is after church, we have dinner, then the kids get Christmas pjs, and we read The Night Before Christmas, each person picking out one copy to read from. We go around taking turns reading and we show each other the pictures in our books and compare how each artist interpreted the poem. This year, I bought a new version to add to our collection – I had come across Loren Long’s version while picking up some stocking stuffers at Barnes and Noble and I loved how he rotates the story through several different households. I thought it felt like a really fresh take on the poem.

And then we were at Christmas, which I’ll save for another post…

Grateful for:
– The ten year old’s faith in Santa. I don’t know if she still truly believes in Santa. But she believes in the magic of him – she helps her younger siblings write letters to Santa and tells them about him. She puts out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve, and even writes him a letter, expecting a reply. It’s pretty magical.
-The Husband being safe. One day last week, it was raining and the weather was awful, and he got into a car accident. It was pretty ugly, but I’m really glad that he wasn’t hurt.
-The local Botanical Gardens. I was feeling really overwhelmed one day, and I decided to go to the Botanical Gardens to sit and it was the pause I needed that day.
-Connecting with friends.

One last thing… I was pretty flabbergasted by this display which I saw in the grocery store as I was on the hunt for candy canes. (Which, incidentally, I had a really difficult time finding. I finally found one box of small candy canes tucked way in the back of a shelf at Target.).

I couldn’t find candy canes during the week before Christmas, but I could stock up for Valentine’s Day. Wow.

What We Ate:
Saturday: I went out to dinner with my friend – there was a band playing at the local Irish pub, and she knew one of the musicians so we went to listen.

Sunday: Can’t remember…

Monday: Turkey meatballs with pasta and red sauce.

Tuesday: Stir fried vegetables with noodles, and stir fried cabbage from Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food by Hsiao-Ching Chou. I borrowed this cookbook from the library in an attempt to cook more vegetarian food and I love how simple and flavorful the recipes are.

Wednesday: Indian food after Zoo Lights

Thursday: Vegetarian Chili from The Weekday Vegetarian. This chili’s secret ingredient was dark chocolate – which gave it a smoky mole flavor. I would put a little less chocolate in it next time – the chocolate flavor was a little pronounced.

Friday: Peruvian Chicken and Pizza Take Out

Saturday: Frozen tortellini and red sauce.

Sunday: Christmas Dinner – roast lamb leg (used this recipe), butternut squash salad (from America’s Test Kitchen. no one really ate this; it was a little undercooked), Scalloped potatoes, Jello ribbon salad (from my Mother In Law’s recipe), Filipino sweet rolls (this recipe from Saveur), broccoli (simply seared in pan with salt and pepper), and sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

Weekly Recap + What we ate: Christmas is around the corner! Try not to panic.

Christmas Train Display at the Trolley Museum.

The festive events are starting to really populate our calendar. Last weekend, we took the kids to the Trolley Museum for their holiday display and trolley ride with Santa. This checked a lot of boxes on the Holiday fun list – there was model trains, Santa, and crafts. The two little kids went on the trolley ride twice so got to ask Santa for toys twice. The first time, the baby asked for a rubber crocodile. The second time, both kids asked for a train set. Spoiler alert – they are not getting a rubber crocodile.

Sunday the ten year old and I went Christmas shopping at the mall. I haven’t done that in an age! We also had lunch there, and there was a really tasty Korean noodle place in the food court. I love how food court options have really expanded since I was a kid. The ten year old had Shake Shack. I find malls a little exhausting for all the choice that is there. We were there to get calendars, but also ended up in the candy store. There were wine gums and Dairy Milk, so I guess it was an okay pit stop. The we stopped at Michaels and we indulged in that fad of taking pictures in the floral section:

Monday was Merry TubaChristmas! It’s a concert where tuba players of all ages from across the region get together to play Christmas carols. The Husband and I have been going to TubaChristmas since we were dating; it’s one of our Christmas must dos. I think one year I was working and couldn’t go, but except for that year, and 2020, we’ve gone every December. It’s always fun to go see all the tubas decorated for the holidays and to hear them play Christmas tunes and feel the floor vibrate for the very lowest notes. They always invite the kids up to sing Jingle Bells, and the three year old took to the stage without hesitation, with the ten year old running up behind her to make sure she could get up onstage okay. The five year old didn’t want to go up at first, but when he saw that his sisters were both up there, he went up too.

That’s a lot of brass. And there were even more in the balconies.

The rest of the week was pretty chill. There was a “snow” delay on Wednesday because of an anticipated storm. It ended up just being rainy and cold, but I was still fine with school starting two hours later and having a slower morning.

I went to the library one day and hoped to pick up some holiday/Christmas books, but the pickings were super slim. I guess that is to be expected mid-December. I usually go the week leading into Christmas but since I wasn’t really going to do Advent books this year, I didn’t feel the same sense of urgency. Maybe I should just buy some more Christmas picture books?

The five year old’s class had a gingerbread house decorating event on Friday morning, which I went to. It was actually graham crackers attached to small milk cartons with frosting, but I’m sure it’s all the same as long as there is a surface to attach candy. Lessons learned:
– Get the thick popsicle sticks to spread frosting. The tongue depressor size.
– do not get the shrink wrapped candy canes. By the time you get the plastic off there are broken pieces and frustrated kids.
– the cutting edge on the Saran Wrap is sharp.
-kids like decorating with those red and white peppermint candies, but do not like to eat them.

Also … one parent brought Hot Tamales candy. I thought that was a curious choice. Maybe a little unfortunate for those kids who were unfamiliar with them and thought they were Mike and Ikes. But I don’t know… maybe there are kids out there who like Hot Tamales? My did certainly did not.

Thank goodness for the mask, otherwise enforcing the “no licking, no eating” rule would have been hard.

One week til Christmas and hopefully I’m in an okay place. On the to do list still:
-grocery shop. I have the menu mostly planned.
– Holiday cards for the kids teachers. We’re going to paint some blank cards this weekend. I have to pick up some gift cards to go in them this week.
-Put our Christmas cards in the mail. They are all addressed and stamped, I just have to walk them down to the mailbox. This feels pretty late. Every year I say I’ll do it sooner, but it never works out that way.
– Order presents for my brother’s family. They don’t celebrate Christmas so I’m not that concerned with making the December 25th deadline for this.
-Order present for my parents. I’m gifting them Storyworth this year. It’s a service that sends the recipient weekly questions about their life and the recipient writes and answer, and can upload pictures. At the end of 52 weeks, the company take all the answers and put them together in a book. It’s a virtual gift so I don’t feel panicked about that either, as long as I order it this week sometime.
-Pickup one last present for the 10 year old. She wanted some Barbie accessories. This stuff was specifically on her letter to Santa. I’m always surprised that she still plays with Barbies, but I think she just really likes setting up little scenes. I’m going to pick up some plates and tiny food from the craft store. (The stuff says “for decoration only. Not a toy.” so I had a moment of pause. But I figure it’s fine for a ten year old.) The rest of the kids’ presents are mostly done. I think. The Husband is in charge of the toys. I try to stick to some version of “Want, need, read, wear” categories for the kids, plus one Santa gift. I take care of the “need, read, wear” and the Husband does “want” and “Santa”. Clearly he’s the fun parent.
-Stocking stuffers – mostly candy and snack food, but other things if the mood strikes. Last year, in a somewhat self-serving mood, I got everyone a small kitchen gadget. This year we’ve got small things from the arts supply store and matchbox cars so far.
-Maybe one more present for the Husband if I can make it to the right store.
– organize some activities and playdates for the winter break. Also buy tickets to a Christmas movie.
-Pre-make cookie dough. We’re having some kids over to decorate cookies during winter break.

So not too much, I hope, to get done in one week if I’m purposeful about it.

Speaking of baking… I’ve been thinking about my Holiday Baking aspirations. Most of my ideas this year comes from the Cooks Illustrated Holiday Baking magazine – some of the recipes are a little fussy, so the holidays are the perfect time, I feel, to put in the effort. This year I would like to bake:
-Molasses cookes (chewy and spicy kind)
– Sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies for decorating
-Sticky Toffee Pudding, our traditional Christmas dessert
-Eggnog Bundt cake. Because the Bundt pan I got this year has been woefully underused.
-Cinnamom buns for Christmas morning, as is our tradition. This I usually use the recipe from either The Irish Pantry or King Arthur’s Flour.
-Chex mix. Have to have something savory.
-rolls for Christmas Dinner.
-And I’ve already made apple cranberry crisp. It was a recipe from that Cooks Illustrated magazine and it was a great way to use up the leftover bowl of cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving. I’m going to put this crisp into post Thanksgiving rotation because we always have so much leftover cranberry sauce.

Grateful for This Week:
– The ten year old’s school music program. They had their Holiday Choral Concert this year and it was really cute. At her old school, Choir was an extracurricular so kids had to opt in to do it and got pulled out of class. At her new school, it’s just part of the regular music class. I really like that the school feels like music performance is important enough that all kids should participate.
– Finding parking just a half block from the restaurant on Monday night after TubaChristmas. Also grateful for the Restaurant itself, Chinatown Express, where tehy hand make their noodles. We went to this restaurant, partly because the Husband had been there with the kids the day before and had left the 5 year old’s hat there. So aside from this place having really really good food, we had a practical reason for going there. But… it is also smack in the middle of Chinatown, next to the arena and there was a game that night so parking was a challenge. We circled the area for about fifteen minutes and were about to give up when someone pulled out and we snagged their parking spot. And it was just a half block from the restaurant. A true holiday miracle. And the staff at the restaurant are always super nice and they put up with my attempts to speak half in Chinese and they smile when the kids’ say “xie xie.” The biggest surprise was that the baby loves Chinese broccoli! She grabbed the thick stalk in her hand and just chowed down on it and then had two more pieces. She ate a vegetable!!! So exciting!
– Libraries and librarians. I had a book that I just can’t find – it’s in the house somewhere, but I don’t know where it ended up. Anyhow because of that book being waaaay overdue, there is a hold on my library card. I was going to just pay for the book, but the librarian gave me that sly look that they do and just clicked a few things and electronically returned the book and re-checked it out to me. “I’m just going to give you nine more weeks to find it,” she said to me.
– Not being at my old summer job. I’ve been off Facebook for over a year now, but this week, I popped back on as I was doing Christmas cards and I have a few friends who had gotten married and I had to Facebook stalk them to figure out the correct last names to put on the cards. Anyhow… it was kind of an overwhelming vortex black hole of … noise and news and happenings. Before I could log off, I saw a whole bunch of posts about this one company that I used to work for. I had left under difficult circumstances, and I had been very sad to leave, and I always somewhat regret not being there still. It’s also a part of why I no longer log into Facebook since I found I couldn’t deal with seeing any news about the company or my colleagues and friends working there. Anyhow the company now seem to be embroiled in some union negotiations that are, let’s just say, not going well. The whole thing just seems really sad and toxic. Over the past five years I’ve have bouts of great sadness about not working there anymore and I really miss my colleagues and the work we did, but after reading about the union negotiations that are happening, I am really glad I’m not part of the contentiousness happenings and drama.

Looking forward to:
-Anniversary Date Night with Husband. We hired a sitter and everything!
-Zoolights with friends.
– Going to see a musical with the ten year old and the five year old and our friends!
-Ticking everything off my Holiday to do list above.
-Christmas dinner and family time.

What We Ate:
Saturday: Pizza (Husband made) and Arthur Christmas (see my last post for the run down on that movie).

Sunday: Sheetpan baked gnocchi. This was one of those pantry dinners that never seem like pantry dinners. Toss whatever roastable veggies I have in olive oil, salt and pepper – in this case it was butternut squash, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, turnip, rutabaga – add gnocchi. Pour into sheet pan. Roast for 25-30 mins.

Monday: Dinner out at Chinatown Express – we had duck noodle soup, roast pork stir-fried noodles (both these dishes with fresh noodles), Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, green sauteed with garlic, soup dumping, pork dumpling and kung pao chicken. So much food! Sooooo good!

Tuesday: Kale Saag Paneer from Meera Sodha’s East. I had a bunch of heavy cream and half and half to use up as well as two bunches of kale, so this seemed like a good recipe to use. The paneer didn’t turn out great – I think using heavy cream instead of all half and half makes for a softer paneer so the texture didn’t quite hold up in the saag.

Wednesday: Farrotto with roasted butternut squash and brussel sprouts from The Weekday Vegetarians. This was billed as risotto but with farro. It never got as creamy as risotto, but it was still pretty tasty.

Thursday: Red lentils from The Weekday Vegetarians. Vegan. Something quick and tasty that we could eat before the 10 year old’s holiday concert.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and Charlie Brown Christmas and The Ted Lasso Holiday Special from last year.

Weekly recap + What we ate: World Cup watching

Last week was a quiet week; between a sick kid and a supertitle gig I spend most of last week at home. Trying to work, getting distracted, cuddling, and reading.

The week started with yet another sick child. The five year old had been running a fever all weekend. He’s a good patient and just lay on the couch all weekend, moving to his bed when he got tired of that. We had had plans to get the Christmas tree, and when he still wasn’t feeling better on Sunday, I sent the Husband and other two kids out to get the tree from our local fire station, where we always get our tree. They came home with a nice tall tree, the bifurcated top led the tree to be dubbed Maleficent by the ten year old.

While they were gone, I strung the outdoor lights. We have a motley assortment of lights and every year I try to remember how I strung them up the year before so that things don’t look too patchwork. We have red and white lights – those go on the front stoop. We have multi coloured lights – those go on the hedge. But those come in two sizes, so I have to be strategic on how those go on. Plus one set actually has a white light setting which we use after Christmas. Then we have one set of white lights that go on the witch hazel tree. Every year it seems like we have too many or not enough but then push, prod, and re-adjust and things work out. I need to just take a picture for posterity.

The lights for the tree were also kind of a saga. The Husband bought a new set of lights for our tree because one of our string of lights had that cliched section that didn’t light up. Unfortunately, the new strand was not the right quality of white light to match our existing strand, even though both were “warm white” light. The nuances of “warm white” baffles me. So I took our old light strand and swapped out light bulbs until I figured out the problem and managed to move the non-light up section to the end of the strand. Fine, we wadded up the non-light up section and pushed it into the middle of the tree. Lights went up on the tree. Not an hour after we put all the lights on the tree, the middle section of one strand went out. Argh!!!! By this point we were kind of over it and decided to leave everything. There is a swath of unlit tree in the middle of our tree, but we have decided just to live with it. I’m putting a reminder in my phone to buy new lights for next year.

Ignore that black hole in the middle of the Christmas tree.

Anyhow the rest of the week: Two days at home with a sick kid, with a trip to the pediatrician whose verdict was some kind of virus. We watched a lot of Snoopy. I tried to convince him to watch Steven Universe, but he was reluctant. I did watch one holiday movie as I worked – Steppin’ into the Holidays.

The the five year old got better just in time to go back to school for the scheduled half day. (I’m a little baffled by all the random half days and days off that the kids get…) With the half day, I took the five year old and his friend on a walk on a trail nearby that I’m sure is lovely in the spring, but in the winter, it is pretty clear that the trail is mostly a cover for a sewage pipe that runs the length of the creek. While it was nice to be out an stretching our legs it wasn’t the most picturesque winter stroll. But we went to Sweetfrog after, and that was a nice treat. My favorite Sweetfrog combination is: plain yogurt, mochi, fresh fruit.

Thursday night I had a super title gig. The featured singer was someone I had worked with before so that was fun to hear her sing. I’m always unsure if singers I work with remember me because I feel like a lot of my job is to be in the background, but this singer gave me a huge hug and was really happy to see me, so that was nice. It was a lovely program, the theme of which was “nomads” so a lot of the pieces had some kind of mystic/Orient flavor to them. Beautiful music, but also some of the translations/texts were definitely a little cringey in how they exoticize women of eastern cultures.

World cup + Laundry. A good combination.

Random thoughts on watching the World Cup. I wouldn’t call myself a sports fan, but I am a “big event” fan, and the World Cup certainly is that. Despite playing soccer for much of my youth, I am definitely not up on any of the soccer language or subtleties. I don’t have a favorite team and usually root for the underdog. This week, I watched most of the quarter final games and it was harrowing. Talk about underdog stories. What I’ve discovered about me and soccer:
– Seeing athletes cry gets me every time. Not in an “they shouldn’t be crying” kind of way, but more like a “That’s so sad” kind of way. Disappointment is I think the one emotion that I find the saddest.
-Athletes are really good looking. There’s youth on their side, of course. But they all have a certain glow about them. Maybe it’s that light of determination in their eyes, or the glint of optimism. Maybe it’s just sweat. Anyhow. Gah. I feel so agist to have said it, but I do feel like I spend a good amount of my soccer viewing time just marveling at how beautiful these players are.
-Soccer is a game of instants. It’s not a million instants like basketball or glacial instants like baseball or football. It’s fast but sometimes it takes a while to score so you have to stay glued to the set, or you will miss a goal. After missing one goal by going to the bathroom, I did not move off the couch again while play was still going on. And when a team does score, it’s always breath taking. Every single goal was deemed beautiful and amazing and perfect by the commentators.
-Watching soccer is really stressful for me! Especially having to decide the game in penalty shoot out. Soccer is such a team sport, and the penalty shoot out- where it’s down to two people – just seems the wrong way to decide things. It’s nail-biting and I hate nail-biting.

Grateful for this week:
– That my friend decided to throw herself a birthday gathering and I got to see some friends that I’d fallen out of touch with. It was so nice to see everyone.
-Hulu. Or rather being able to afford Hulu so I can watch the World Cup.
– The Husband for putting the kids to bed while I worked in the evenings.
– my food mill. I had bought at bushel of seconds at the farm stand at the five year old’s request for apple sauce. The Husband bought a food mill for me for Christmas one year when the ten year old was a baby and I wanted to make my own baby food. These days I only use it to make apple sauce, but oh how easy it is to make apple sauce with it. All I have to do is remove the stemps, quarter the apples, cook them down with about 1/2 cup water until they are soft, then run them through the mill. No peeling or coring.

Half of the bushel left after the first batch of apple sauce made.

Looking Forward to:
-Tuba Christmas! I really hope we can get tickets. This year they have a system where you can reserve your free tickets, which is different from in the past when you just showed up and tickets were just handed out. (We did this last night and it was awesome.)
-The ten year old’s school choral concert.
– Christmas baking. I’m starting to work on my list.
-World Cup semi-finals and finals.

And then Christmas is in less than two weeks. Eeep! Gotta to start thinking about what we are going to have for Christmas Dinner – I think it will be ham. And then finish with the Christmas shopping – I have the list, just need to buy everything, and also gifts for teachers. And do festive things and do cozy things.

What We Ate: Pretty much everything we ate came from Jenny Rosenstrach’s The Weekday Vegetarians. I didn’t think I would like this cook book a lot, but it’s proven to have some rock solid easy recipes.

Saturday: I went out to celebrate a friends’ birthday and I probably ate five plates of truffle fries.

Sunday: Cheese and cracker and snack dinner as we tried to put lights on the tree.

Monday: Quinoa and Roasted veggie salad. This was really tasty. The roasted veggies were carrots, cabbage, and beets.

Tuesday: Pinto Bean bowls. Pinto beans eaten over rice, topped with avocado, pickled onions, pickled jalapenos, sour cream, radishes.

Wednesday: Charred broccoli and tofu with spicy peanut sauce. Eaten over egg noodles. Simple and really tasty.

Thursday: I was working and got a grain bowl from Beefsteak, a vegetable heavy restaurant. I made up my own bowl combination today and liked it so much, I took a picture of the recipt so I could order it again.
For the record, it was: Quinoa, butter poached sweet potatoes, cooked cabbage, steamed kale, edamame, sauteed mushrooms, scallions, kimchi, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, toasted seaweed, miso dressing and garlic yogurt sauce.

Friday: Pizza (take out) and the Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special – which was hilarious and festive and touching.

Weekly Recap + what we ate: Morning routines

This was supposed to be one of the few weeks this fall where everyone had a five full days of school. But… there was the unfortunate incident of the plane in the electrical tower which caused a huge power outage and resulted in school being cancelled on Monday. Then Tuesday and Wednesday, the baby was sick so she stayed home. So it was a lot of unexpected child care this week.

On Monday, I decided to take advantage of the no school day to take the five year old and the neighbor’s kid down to the Botanical Gardens to see the model trains. It actually worked out well – when we have gone to see the Botanical Garden trains in the past, we’ve had to go on the weekend and it’s always been really crowded. This time, the crowds were very light so we could easily see all the displays. I’m glad we went during the week because the train display was smaller than in the past, and probably would not have been as relaxed an experience if I had to fight the crowds to see it.

Model of Union Station, all built of plant matter.

Also – there were baby pineapple plants in the bathroom at the Botanical Gardens. I was so charmed by it, I had to snap a picture:

Monday night the baby started running fever, so I kept her home on Tuesday. She spent a lot of time sleeping, thank goodness, and I got some work done. Other than one incident of vomiting in my bed, she was a pretty low maintenance patient. Even still, she ran a fever again on Tuesday night so we kept her home on Wednesday too. Of course she was more her normal, curious, active self on Wednesday, so I didn’t get as much work done. I actually didn’t mind, though – I was reminded of how during the pandemic I was home and it was just me and the kids and we just kind of hung out and went on walks and baked and read books while cuddling on the couch. And while there was a voice in my head that said, “You really should be working on those supertitle slides!” I think hanging out with my kid is important too – for both of us.

Fun new thing – I’m working on supertitle slides for a concert next week, and one of the songs is in Arabic. I’ve never had to work in Arabic before, so it’s been interesting for sure to match up the translation I was given with the text of the song. Thank goodness for Google and Google translate. At first I was so daunted by the whole things and I kept putting off working on this one song, and I had to remind myself that it’s good to have new work challenges.

Moment to savor: One nice thing about earlier winter sunsets is that when I’m waiting for the school bus in the afternoon I get to see beautiful pink and gold skies. Even as I shiver in the cold there some something breathtaking to see.

I’ve been thinking about my morning routine lately, mostly because there’s been no morning routine this past week and a half. And when there’s no morning routine, habits fall through the cracks.

I’ve been reading B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits, and he has developed a method for building habits that can be summed up as:
1) finding the smallest things you can do,
2) finding a prompt to do that small thing,
3) celebrate doing that small thing to make yourself feel good for doing it.

The part I’ve found most helpful is 2), finding a prompt and I’ve been trying to incorporate more prompts in my daily life. There are lots of good behaviours I want to encourage, but I struggle with finding a routine. So I’ve latched on to the idea of finding prompts for things as a reminder to do (or not do) something. For example:
1) The five year old used to wet the bed at night at least once a week. This was mostly because we forget to tell him to go the the bathroom before bed. Also- the ten year old was always leaving things in her pockets, causing havoc on laundry day. So now, after we brush our teeth (prompt – more specifically, after we put our toothbrushes back), the five year old goes to the bathroom and the ten year old empties her pockets.
2) I have a terrible habit of checking my phone at stop lights, and I decided I needed an alternative activity. So now every time I get to a stoplight (prompt), I do kegels until the light turns green to keep me off my phone.

Anyhow, I had set up a series of prompts in my head for the morning, and for a variety of reasons (holidays, the oldest has a morning writing club, just being tired), I hadn’t been doing these things. Rather I was just relying on memory and instinct to do them. My ideal morning prompt/habits would be:

– The Husband leaves for work. The moment the door shuts behind him, we all go do our morning teeth brushing.
-The ten year old leaves to walk the baby to the neighbor’s so they can take her to school. The moment she leaves, I do a ten minute yoga video. (In Fogg’s world, the tiny habit would be – the moment the door closes (prompt), I lay out my yoga mat (tiny action.)) I particularly liked this one because the five year old would do it with me.
-I take the kids to the school bus. When I pull in wherever I need to go after (work or home), as soon as I turn off the car, I do my daily Wordle and Duolingo.

(I still would love to figure out a prompt for journaling… maybe I need to put the journal by my bed and do it as soon as I wake up? I think this is also where routines and habits blend into each other.)

Anyhow, the morning brushing, yoga, Wordle, and Duolingo weren’t getting done this past week. Partly because not having to catch a school bus sucks the urgency out of the morning, and also a couple days, the ten year old’s before school writing club meant that there was no prompt for #2. Wordle and Duolingo usually got done at some point in the day, but I did have to use a couple streak freezes for the Duolingo because I would just forget. And granted none of this stuff was IMPERITIVE, but the morning feels better when I just automatically do things. I feel like when I know that these things will automatically happen after a prompt, I don’t spend mental energy on trying to figure when or if they will happen. (Contrast that with exercise/running – I don’t have a prompt for that because what with the weather and darker days and my current more flexible schedule, exercise doesn’t always happen at the same time and I like to look at my whole day in order to decide where it will happen. )

So I’ve been contemplating the difference between having a morning routine, where the morning is time blocked (ie. 7:00a teeth, 7:15 breakfast, 7:45 get dressed, etc…), versus just having prompts and habits and knowing the rest of the morning activities (pack lunch, get dressed, prep dinner, make breakfast – the essentials) will fall in place around it. I will say we have a luxuriously long morning – the kids are usually up by 6:30/6:45a and the baby goes to the neighbors’ at 8:10pm and the rest of us leave for the school bus at 8:50a. So nothing feels rushed, really. I just think I feel like the morning gets off to a better start when I do more than just the essential survival tasks of food and clothing. Anyhow, here’s hoping the next few weeks I can get back to my tiny habit mornings.

One the List This Weekend:
– Birthday Party (adult)
-Birthday Party x2 (kids)
-Decorate for Christmas/ go get our tree
– Tidy/ Pick up since cleaners are coming on Monday.
-Order Christmas Cards
-Christmas movie
-Bake Cookies (hopefully)
-World Cup Watching.
-Meal Plan for next week.

Grateful for This Week:
– That the pilot and passenger who flew into the electrical tower were able to be rescued safely. I don’t know them, but it must have been horrifically scary. I’m really glad that there were people who knew how to get them down safely.
-All the bloggers who participated in NnBloPoMo – I’ve really enjoyed reading all the thoughts they put into the world this month, such honesty, realness and humor. And now I feel like I have new blogs to pop in and read and the (virtual) world has opened up a little.
-That I’m not working right now and can just roll with the school cancellations and sick days. This week would have been difficult if I had been working because before/after care, which I usually would have used for school closures, was also closed due to the plane/power outage issue. I know so many parents that had to majorly scramble for coverage on Monday.
– Hoopla and my library card. The kids have been listening to Dear Evan Hansen a lot these days. (Also Taylor Swift.) I thought it might be fun to get some music from the show so we can sing it, so rather than buying the sheet music, I put a bunch of music books on hold at the library. When I was loading up my holds list, I noticed that a bunch of these music books were also available as eBooks via Hoopla, so I downloaded those and have been trying to learn Waving Through the Window. There was a lot of music available and I’m eager to dip into more!

Looking forward to:
– Helping my friend celebrate her birthday tonight.
– Supertitle gig next week.
– Getting my teeth cleaned. I know going to the dentist isn’t something people look forward to but, 1) next week is relatively quiet for adventures, and 2) I really like my dentist and hygienist – they are so nice, make me feel taken care of, and make me laugh even while suctioning spit out of my mouth.

What We Ate – This managed to be an eat-from-the-pantry/fridge/freezer week, which is always good the week after Thanksgiving:

Monday: Broccoli Pasta from Bad Manners cookbook. Vegan. This is really tasty for how simple it is. Boil pasta, drain. Sear broccoli in a pan, add garlic and red pepper flakes. Mix pasta in with broccoli. At the table, top with panko parmesan (Panko, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, paprika.) Yes, it’s essentially carbs topped on carbs, but the crunchy savory topping is what really makes this dish for me.

Tuesday: Spicy Salmon Tacos – I used the Korean Pork Taco recipe from Dinners Illustrated but subbed in Salmon and Shrimp for the pork.

Wednesday: Comedy night with my friend – I had a vegan mushroom risotto. The Husband stayed home with the kids and they had breakfast sandwiches and hash browns

Thursday: Butternut Squash Soup from Weeknight Vegetarian. Vegan version that used coconut milk to make it creamy. This was simple and tasty.

Friday: Meatball subs from the deli, wolfed down before the 10 year old’s piano recital. No movie this night – the piano recital was followed immediately by basketball practice.

Weekly recap + what we ate: Thanksgiving 2022

Well we’ve emerged at the other end of Thanksgiving weekend. HOWEVER…. the kids were supposed to go back to school Monday, but there was a massive power outage last night and the schools were closed. Apparently a small plane flew into a electrical tower. No one is hurt, and the power has actually been restored to schools, but the schools need to do some damage assessment before they let the kids come back. So that makes day six of no school.

Given that last week consisted only of two half days of school, it certainly feels as if there’s been a lot of time at home and with the kids the past week and a half. I don’t feel like I have to be the children’s cruise director, but I do acknowledge that life is smoother if on days without school we get out of the house for a large chunk of time. With that in mind, one half day, I had the kids accompany me on my HMart grocery run – I bribed them by letting them pick out their own packs of Pocky as a snack- then took them to the park. It was chilly so I packed some hot chocolate in a Thermos.

The other half day the kids and I went to the library and the park next to the library. I love our library and park because it’s a low key one stop kids destination – there is a big open grassy area that the kids can run around in, there is a playground, and then when we get tired of that, we can go to the library and read book, or, more likely, play on the computers. I ran into a colleague that I hadn’t seen in two years but who just moved to the area, which always perks me up. I picked up another thick tome – Juliet Barker’s biography on the Brontës. I think January might be a Jane Eyre redux month – I want to read “My Plain Jane“, having just read the first book in the series, a retelling of the story of Lady Jane Grey, and found it hilarious. This second book in the series is a retelling of Jane Eyre, which is my favorite book.

Wednesday, was a full day off and I was offered tickets to a dress rehearsal of The Nutcracker, so I took the two older kids. I haven’t been to see The Nutcracker since probably high school. This was a nice traditional Nutcracker with all the expected bit – children, mice, Sugar Plum Fairy, a growing tree, lots of snow, and rows of tutus dancing in perfect unison. The kids were more engaged with the first half, which was where the main narrative arc of the story was. The second half, left them a little restless. My favorite part, though, was getting to hear the orchestra play Tchaikovsky’s score.

We did not go anywhere for Thanksgiving – at one point we had contemplated visiting a friend in New Jersey, but the thought of packing and travelling with the kids seemed so daunting and a nice quiet weekend at home much more appealing. We even made plans to clean out the attic, which did not happen. Thanksgiving Day itself was pretty quiet. As is our tradition, we watched the Macy’s Day Parade starting at 9am. I was a little confused at first because all the musical theatre numbers were shown at the beginning of the broadcast, and I was used to them being spaced throughout the parade, so I initially thought that they weren’t going to show the balloons and floats this year, just the musical numbers. But fear not. They balloons and floats started at 10am. My favorite bit was the cast of the Pitch Perfect spin off performing a mashup of 99 Luftbaloons + Take On Me. It was pretty awesome. Also the excerpt from Lion King – once you’ve seen stilt walkers as giraffes all the other performers seem kind of landbound. I had seen the musical years ago and the puppetry is just as brilliant and thrilling twenty years later seen on tv.

After dinner, we watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles – I hadn’t seen it before, and the Husband has been waiting YEARS for us to watch this as a family. In years past we’ve watched Scent of a Woman, but this year I guess the kids are at that phase where they’re too young for Scent of a Woman and just old enough for Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Another holiday tradition that shifts.

The rest of the weekend felt pretty full for a quiet holiday at home. I guess when we stay home, adventure comes to us. We ended up having two park play dates – one at our local park and one at a farther away park that I’d never been to, but which was huge and fun and had a carousel. I might have lost the three year old there and might have been that mother whose child was picked up sobbing by another mother on the playground. Ugh.

In addition to that, I went through the kids’ snow gear and made a note of what I needed to stock up on for this year, we watched football (American) and football (soccer), and tidied and cleaned and I went through the fruit bowl and decided to toss some really old apples, but then decided that I shouldn’t waste food like that so I made applesauce. I took the ten year old to buy some clothes and we found a dress for her upcoming piano recital. There was also church, a visit to the Farmer’s Market and the local co-op to stock up on snacks, a new to us coffee shop, and lighting of Advent candles. And we’ve started playing Christmas music at our house and watching Christmas movies.

Oh and before that, on Saturday night my friend called and said that she was sick but she had tickets for Frozen with the Symphony that night and did I want to go and take her kids? It’s one of those shows where they show the movie and the orchestra is onstage playing the music. So I said sure why not and took the ten year old, the three year old and my friend’s two kids. It was kind of an ordeal getting there – three preteens and a three year old in a car is not for the faint of heart, but we made it and mostly enjoyed the movie (I mean who doesn’t like Frozen?!?). And they blew fake snow over the audience during the closing credits – that was kind of magical.

The three year old wore her big sister’s hand me down Anna dress to the concert/movie, and it was interesting to me how many kids came dressed up. But also interesting is that most of the kids came in costumes from Frozen 2 – it made me feel the passage of time that my three year old’s Anna dress was kind of vintage Anna now.

Lessons learned this Thanksgiving:
– Find a better time to go to Costco. Or maybe there is no good time to go to Costco? I went Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving then I went to Giant to do the grocery shop. It was all so exhausting and crowded. Also- on Wednesday night, I discovered we were out of dish soap and I seriously started contemplating the it wouldn’t be terrible if I didn’t do any dishes for the next few days rather than going to to the store again. Thankfully, the Husband prevailed and went to the store and got dish soap.
– I tried a new fat ratio for pie crust this time and I really liked it. I used to do all butter or half butter/half shortening. This time I did 2/3 butter and 1/3 shortening and it’s not as tasty as a full butter crust, but the texture was perfect. Despite the droopy pie crust, the pies were really tasty.
– Make/ buy the rolls. I decided to skip the rolls this year because it was just us and I didn’t want to have a lot of food, but you know what? I miss having rolls at the table. So next year – don’t skip the rolls.
– Do better at trading off alone time with the Husband. Five days at home with the kids is a lot of togetherness and we all had moments of burnout. We need to be better at making sure there is child-free time for each parent on these stretches.

Grateful For This week: Of course it was Thanksgiving week, so my gratitude list was very long, but some specific things from this week:
– The opportunity to go see live performances. It’s a nice perk of my job that periodically I get tickets to things and get to take my kids. I’m also grateful that I can take my kids and they will usually sit through things, or if they get restless they will sit on my lap and cuddle.
– Neighbors and strangers who help. I had an odd incident on Thanksgiving Day while out on my run; I came across a lady walking up the sidewalk with three suitcases who clearly needed help, but I was so far out of my depths and didn’t know how to help her. I felt so thankful that my neighbor was able to offer some resources and then a random stranger pulled his car over and took the lady to a shelter.
– My kids’ teachers. We had parent teacher conferences last week and I am so grateful to the teachers who help my kids learn – not just book learning, but also learning life skills. I’m especially grateful for the ten year old’s teacher. Our conference was only supposed to be fifteen minutes but she spent over half an hour with us answering questions and talking us through strategies to help the ten year old in areas where she was struggling.

Looking Forward To
– Buckling down and getting the translation slides done for this supertitle gig I have next week. It seems weird to be looking forward to that, but I feel like I’ve spend so much time this past week thinking, and planning, and executing family and children adventures, that being able to do something that is work and not kid related is going to be a nice chance for flow and focus.
– Night out at a comedy show with my friend. I’ve never been to a comedy show, so I’m excited to see what it is like. This one is by a local comedy troupe and is called “Mother of all Comedy Show” and supposed to be about family and the holidays. Hopefully it will be funny.
– The ten year old’s piano recital this week.

One Fun Thing I Read:
I really liked this article about Japanese fans cleaning up after World Cup games. I’ve always been really fascinated by how Japanese children are expected to help tidy their classrooms and the how the expectations are pretty high for independence and stewardship in children. It was really cool to see those traits manifest on an international stage. (Related listening – I loved this episode of 99% Invisible talks about Japanese toddlers going on their first errands and how Japanese cities and culture supports that.)

What We Ate:

Monday: Crispy Chickpeas with homemade Flatbread from Weekday Vegetarian. We had some leftover yogurt sauce from when the husband make chicken schwarma last week, so I thought this would be a good use.

Tuesday: Butternut Squash Curry from Budget Bytes. This was simple and tasty and used up a squash that had been sitting around . We ate it with flatbread rather than rice. Vegan.

Wednesday: Kitchen sink fried rice, recipe loosely based off of Weekday Vegetarian’s Mushroom and Bok Choy fried rice. We had a lot of leftover rice in the fridge so this was a good way to use that up. Because I wanted this to be our second vegan meal this week, I made it with fried tofu rather than eggs. This recipe called for the vegetables to be sautéed then removed from the pan, then the rice cooked in a layer to make it crispy then the veggies added back in – it made for a fried rice that was very veggie heavy, which I liked.

Thursday: THANKSGIVING!!! Duck with orange sauce, roasted potatoes, cranberry sauce, broccoli salad, ribbon jello (which the ten year old made ann which the Midwestern Husband insists on calling “Ribbon Salad”.) Pumpkin and Apple pie for dinner.

Friday: Pizza and the Paw Patrol Movie. My first experience with the Paw Patrol Phenomenon. It was fine… though I was a little annoyed that there was only one female Paw Patrol. Or maybe obviously female. Maybe more of them are females and I just don’t know because I have preconceived gender associations and only the pink dog can be a girl…?

Saturday: Sandwiches at the theatre before Frozen. I think the Husband and the five year old had take out at home.

Sunday: Dumplings and Spirited, a new movie on AppleTV, a Christmas Carol inspired story featuring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. I mostly enjoyed this movie – it had singing and dancing and was funny and irreverent. And Octavia Butler as the romantic lead – how awesome is that? There was one moment that I found a little cringe-y that almost ruined the movie for me – there are two things things that I personally don’t like being used as plot points and this had one of them.

Weekly Recap + What we ate: Cold, Sick, and Social

I think the chill has finally come to stay. This week was cold and little rainy. I’ve started making hot chocolate for the kids to sip after school, with one big marshmallow floating in their cup. No big adventures this week, and the week was also kind of “meh” for getting things done, but there was lots of time with friends, which fills lots of my buckets too.

Monday the Husband took the day off and we took the Metro into DC to see a movie. We saw a 9:50am showing of The Woman King. There is something really fun about seeing a morning movie and being the only people in the theatre. The movie itself was entertaining, though a little more violent than I liked.

Afterwards, we had dumplings and noodles at a restaurant that we used to go to all the time when we lived in DC – they make their own noodles and if you come at the right time, you can see the chef in the window pulling, stretching, and cutting the dough – it’s actually quite neat. I had duck noodle soup. Noodle soup needs to go on my list of cozy things!

plus… all my favorite condiments – pickled garlic, scallion ginger sauce, and chili flakes in oil.

Afterwards we decided to walk the mile or so to Union Station because there is a Blue Bottle Coffee there and we can also catch the Metro home from there. Union Station is special to us because that is where the Husband proposed and where he bought my wedding ring. It’s a little sad to see that a lot of the shops have closed there – it used to have a whole level of nice shopping, but now all the storefronts are empty, including the jewelers where that wedding ring was purchased.

That afternoon, my friend invited us over so the kids could jump on their trampoline. After I picked up the five year old from the bus, I headed over. The Husband followed with the other two kids and also brought beer and made a charcuterie plate and we had happy hour from 4:30p- 5:45p. It was such a nice afternoon visit and we agreed we should do this more.

It’s been a surprisingly Social Week. Aside from impromptu happy hour, I also had a planned happy hour with some moms from my mom’s group. The temperatures were in the mid thirties, but at the bar we went to we snagged a table with a firepit so we were able to sit outside without been too uncomfortable. I didn’t realize how much warmth the fire pit threw off until we got up to leave and I was shivering all the way to the car. It was nice to catch up with friends and talk about life, work, and family.

Then Friday I went over to my friend’s house for a lunch walk and date. We went on a walk and met a very friendly cat who rubbed against us for petting and then lept to the top of a chicken coop and basked in the sun.

We found our way to one of those restaurants that are perfectly curated to look imperfect, with exposed brick, crumbling plaster and mismatched china (see above). Also a beautiful mural across the outside wall. The food was amazing, though – my friend and I split friend green tomatoes, a vegan pot pie (soooooo good! huge fluffy biscuit, smoky mushrooms, edamame, potatoes, carrots, oatmilk béchamel.) and also a chocolate terrine. I also had a Virgin Bloody Mary which was spicy and tangy and came with two olives and a cherry pepper. I don’t love going out to eat because I find the food often to be unexceptional, but I would go back to this place.

The definite low point of the week was when the two older kids were home sick. It was the kind of thing where the five year old had a fever the night before but was fine the next morning, and the ten year old threw up about an hour before she was to go to school. On the one hand, they seemed fine by the time it was actually time to go to school, but I thought I’d be cautious and keep them home. I come from a tradition of “perfect attendance” and “always go to school” so this was a bit of a mind shift for me – the thought that a day at home was okay and might actually be a good thing. I told the kids they had to stay in their rooms and rest until lunchtime at least and the ten year old got out the “sick bell”, the bell that we give sick kids so they can summon a parent if they need.

Everyone was up and restless well before noon. There might have been some scootering inside. There might have been some scootering that ran over my foot which resulted in some yelling and me locking myself in my room for twenty minutes. Then I emerged and decided that they were all well enough to go on a walk, so we went for a cold walk to the park, played for fifteen minutes and then came home. There was some tv and some hot chocolate and I felt like a better person for those indulgences. (I did make the kids watch the cartoons in French, though. I feel like I have a lot of feelings about tv and kids that I need to unpack and work through.)

Grateful for This Week:
– A friend who invites us over to bounce on their trampoline, sends me coupon codes for period underwear, and picks up groceries for me when I’m home with sick kids.
– Having good rain gear.
– The Husband cleaning the frost off my car while I sipped my tea inside. The first car frost of the year!
– The Metro so we don’t have to drive downtown.

Weekend plans and aspirations:
– Clean/ pick up/ tidy since the cleaners are coming on Monday. This will inevitably take more time than I want, but I will play music and dance and hopefully involve minimal yelling.
– Two birthday parties for the baby to attend, both outside park parties. We will bundle well.
– Dinner out with friends tonight
– Write Christmas Letter
-Meal Plan.

Looking Forward To:
– Thanksgiving? Maybe? I haven’t planned anything yet. There will be pie. Everything else I’m a little agnostic about. There has been talk about duck, which might be a fun adventure.
– Hallmark Holiday Movies! We subscribe to a hodge-podge of streaming services… mostly ones that that are “free” with something else. We also are currently subscribed to Peacock so the Husband can watch football and basketball these next few months. Anyhow I just learned that the Hallmark Holiday movies will be on Peacock. So excited!
-Parent Teacher Conference for the ten year old. She’s been so much happier at her new school so I’m excited to talk to her new teacher, who I think is fantastic.

Recipe of the Week: I made Chocolate Banana Muffins from Rise and Run by Shalane Flanagan and Elyse Kopecky who wrote Run Fast. Eat Slow. They turned out great – they were tender and not too sweet, and used oat flour and almond meal instead of regular flour, and bananas and honey instead of white sugar, so I can pretend it’s healthy. No link, but I highly recommend their cookbooks.

Something that made me think this week:
I love the website Grown and Flown because it has a lot of parenting articles for older kids. This week, there was this article “Parents Regret Doing or Not Doing these Ten Things.” Anything with the word “regret” is click-bait for me – I’m always fascinated by lessons learned and attempts to do better. On the other hand I do feel like regret in and of itself is a useless emotion because the world is so full of variables and unpredictability that one can never really say for sure if things would have been better one way or the other. At any rate, I thought there was a lot for me to ponder and digest in this article. #2 “Use Your Words Carefully” particularly hit close to home, especially this parent comment:
“Understand how vulnerable to your comments your children are and how much damage you can create while thinking that you’re just helping.”
I think this goes back to my struggle to parent without judgement. It’s not about not having opinions, but really about how those opinions are expressed. And when.

One thing that made me sad: I read last night about the passing of composer Ned Rorem. When I was in college I sang several of his songs and I’ve always loved his music. Here is one of my favorite songs to sing: “Early in the Morning”. The poem is by Robert Hillyer and tells of a young person in Paris, in love, and the song is so simple in the memory it recalls .. because when you are in Paris and in love, life can be very simple. This video features the very talented tenor Nicholas Phan. I’ve never worked with him but I’ve always loved how he sings arts songs. His rendition of this song isn’t buried in regret like some interpretations that I’ve heard.

Nicholas Phan, tenor and Kuang-Hao Huan, piano

What We Ate: I’ve gotten out of the habit of meal planning and then doing one big grocery shop, but even still I thought this was a pretty good week of dinners for having to scrounge from the pantry and fridge.

Saturday: I was at work, but I’m pretty sure people just loaded up on apps from the bowling birthday party they were at.

Sunday: Smashburgers, Shrimp, and Ricotta Toast at Landmade Brewery after our shortened hike.

Monday: Breakfast sandwiches.

Tuesday: Instant Pot White Beans with Spicy Potatoes. I just got Jenny Rosenstarch’s newest cookbook Weekday Vegetarian from the library and am excited to cook from it. The recipe said to top the beans with pesto, but I wanted this to be our vegan meal, so I made a thrifty vegan pesto with garlic, cashews, olive oil, and leftover basil, cilantro, and parsley that was kind of just wilting in the vegetable drawer. I’m always excited when I can salvage sad veggie drawer contents into something tasty.

Wednesday: Pesto pasta with marinated beans, also from Weekday Vegetarian. I had so much pesto leftover from Tuesday that this meal was easy to mix up. The marinated beans are my new favorite thing – two cans of cannellini beans marinated in red wine vinegar, olive oil, dried Italian Herb Mix (the recipe called for fresh, but I didn’t have any), and garlic. Kae wrote a post this week on a meal hack of just eating protein, and that inspired me to eat the leftover marinated beans all week for lunch the rest of the week, and it was such an easy tasty no-brainer way to eat something filling.

Thursday: I had Truffle Fries and Buffalo Cauliflower nuggets at Happy Hour. The Husband made stir fry with some chicken and bok choy that had to be used up, adding some broccoli to the mix. Bok choy is a hard sell with the little kids.

Friday: Pizza (Husband made) and movie – Men In Black, which I don’t think I’d ever seen. I remember seeing the second one – I was working summer stock theatre at an operetta company in Ohio and the set designer used to work at a movie theatre so he worked something out where the entire company went over one evening and watched Men In Black II and I remember thinking it was so decadent to be able to have the entire movie theatre to ourselves. Anyhow… Men in Black, the first one – very funny though the little kids didn’t quite know whether to be scared or not. Also – Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones of the 90s – how fun are they to watch on screen? I know they both do pretty serious dramas now, but there is such a beautiful effortless ease to their comedies.

Weekly recap + What we ate: Fall Camping

The kids had two days off school this week. Monday was end of quarter grading, and Tuesday was election day. Schools close here on election day because a lot of schools are used as polling locations. So I did get my act together and took the two younger kids on a camping overnight. The oldest had been invited to a birthday party, so she did that.

We went to Burke Lake, about an hour away in Virginia. The main reason I chose this campground was that it was close and also one could book a single night stay. Most of our usual campgrounds require a two night stay. I hadn’t been to Burke Lake before, and found it is a pretty suburban campsite; I could hear the traffic from where we were. As expected, the place was pretty quiet. I imagine it’s a very popular destination in the summer – there is a lake for boating, with a nice trail around the perimeter, and there is also a carousel and ice cream stand and a train ride, none of which was open. I was a little nervous at how empty it was at first. We were the only ones at the campground when we arrived at 1pm, and I do sometimes wonder if camping by myself as a woman is the most prudent thing. But another group arrived late in the afternoon so I felt better.

It was a pretty relaxed camping trip, as these things go. I had thought that we could hike the trail around the lake, but once I had set the tent and the hammock up, the kids were happy just to swing in the hammock and play with their toy cars. We did go for a little woodsy stroll along the part of the lake trail that came past our campground. The weather was lovely – almost 80 degrees – and the afternoon sun was golden. The trees were almost all bare, leaving such a thick carpet of leaves for us to swish through.

This time of year, it gets dark so early, so I started dinner at 4pm. I also made a fire – that’s one of the kids’ favorite parts of camping. I made mac n cheese and we roasted hot dogs over the fire to put in our mac n cheese. We had ‘smores.

The sunset around 5:15pm, and it was dark. I remember looking at my watch as the sun was going down and thinking, “What am I going to do – there’ still three hours til bedtime.” Well, turns out, with my kids, once the sun went down, they were ready to turn in. I’m not sure if it was the lack of sunlight, the big day, or the end of daylights savings, but they were pretty tuckered out by 6:30pm. Maybe it was all three factors. We went to the bathhouse to brush our teeth, returned to the tent to put on our pjs, and I read them two chapters from Winnie the Pooh under the light of the lantern and they snuggled into their sleeping bags – Cocoons, they called them. I stayed up to read for a little bit, and then was asleep by 10:30pm – so early for me!

I was woken up by bright bright light streaming into the tent. I hadn’t set up the rainfly on the tent this time because the weather looked to be dry and I thought it would be nice to get some air into the tent and to be able to see the sky. In the middle of the night, this incandescent light pushed past my eyelids, and I opened my eyes, thinking I had forgotten to turn off the lantern. I hadn’t forgotten – it was the moon. The moon was practically full that night. I remembered seeing it during dinner as it came over the horizon, a huge glowing white disk. Now it was directly over the tent, bright as bright can be. When I’m at home in a house, it’s easy to forget how much light the moon can produce. I could see everything in the tent in the moonlight that came through the mesh roof of our tent.

Eventually I went back to bed and woke up around 6:00am. The kids were already up – I’m not sure how long they were up, or what they were doing, but the sounds of them chattering away to each other penetrated my sleep fog. That and the fall morning chill. Even though I objectively knew the second day was going to be colder (in the mid-50s according to the weather report), I was still unprepared for the reality of it. I hunkered in my sleeping bag as long as possible, but finally faced the reality that kids had to pee and forced myself to emerge.

We had bacon and eggs for breakfast. Then I slowly packed up the campsite with a pause for some hammock time. As I was driving in the day before, my sister-in-law called and we chatted, and I said to her, “What I really want to do is laze in the hammock and read my book.” I almost didn’t get a chance what with setting up the camp, and taking the kids on a walk and then making dinner and cleaning up dinner… but this morning, I decided that I was going to be sad if I didn’t find some hammock time. So after breakfast, and before I packed the car, I took half an hour and lazed in the hammock with a book. It was quite chilly so I packed the sleeping bags in the hammock and it was a super cozy thirty minutes.

After the car was packed up, we spent some time playing at the playground and wandering along another stretch of the lake trail, then we went home around 1pm since I didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. All in all a very relaxing 24 hours.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. I buckled down and got some errands done off my to do list. Finally mailed those sweaters off. Processed more returns – the leggings I ordered from Pact did not fit. Bummer. I liked that they were of a thicker material, but I think the thicker material make them less stretchy.

I did a tie dye experiment with some old sweaters. The experiment wasn’t entirely successful – I tried a technique called ice dying where you put ice over the clothes and sprinkle the tie dye powder over it, and as the ice melts, it saturates the dye into the clothes. I had ice left in the cooler from camping, which is what inspired the project. I sprinkled the dye unevenly, so the grey sweater just looks like it was in a laundry accident – also I think I should have chosen a different colour for the grey sweater – the blue didn’t really show up. Even so, I always love the look of tie dye and I think I’ll try it again since ice dying was a pretty hands off way of doing it.

I had one very frustrating day where on the way to work, there was construction and a poorly marked detour and I spent a half hour driving around trying to get to our parking garage. Driving downtown is always super confusing – the streets change direction at rush hour and if you miss a fork, you’re suddenly in Virginia and you can’t just pull a u-turn to get back on track. (I mean I guess you could – I’ve seen people do it – but I’m not that brave.) I felt particularly defeated because I had planned to get to work 45 minutes early so I could get a run in before starting my show duties, but the detour/getting lost in Virginia ate up all that time. This wrench in my plan almost had me in tears. But got to work and decided to salvage it by running ten minutes to the Wednesday farmer’s market and getting empanadas for dinner and kimchi from one of my favorite vendors. So I guess it wasn’t a frustrating day, just a frustrating, despair ridden 45 minutes.

Yesterday, being Veteran’s Day, the Husband had it off, so we went to Glenstone Museum. It was a rainy, drizzly day, but lovely nonetheless. I had been a few months ago with my mom and cousin, and we didn’t get to see all of the grounds on that visit, so I was glad to go back. We didn’t see everything this time either, but we were moving at a slow pace. We meandered the walkways, stopped for lunch at the cafe (where we also started planning our spring break trip!) and took in some of the galleries. I don’t always understand contemporary art, but the docents at Glenstone are always willing to talk to patrons about it in thoughtful ways, which I appreciate.

Not art, just the view through a drizzly window.

Grateful this week for:
-Our friends, avid campers, who loan us camp chairs and coolers.
– The nice person at FedEx who helped me sort out all the various forms for shipping back to Ireland the Irish sweaters that the Husband had bought me last Christmas. Finally checked that off the to-do list.
– The three year old’s teachers. We had a parent teacher conference for her today and she’s doing really well. I’m impressed by how many letters and numbers she knows. Apparently she needs to work on sharing and letting other kids be the line leader once in a while. I’m not surprised.
-My car, which just just crossed 180, 000 miles and still takes us where we need to go. I probably wouldn’t drive it across the country, all the same.
-A phone call from an old friend and colleague whom I worked with years ago in Colorado. She is a costume person, and had made the ten year old the cutest outfits when she was a baby. Anyhow, after we both left that company, we lost touch except a Christmas card. It was wonderful to catch up.

Hard things this week: Screen time struggles/strategies with the ten year old. We are generally pretty restrictive about screen time, but the ten year old has joined a writing club at school for National Novel Writing Month, which she seems to be enjoying. However, the school has issued Chromebooks to the students in writing club so they can work on their novels at home. There has been a lot of surreptitious screen time for non-novel writing things, and precious little actual novel writing, and I just don’t have the bandwidth to constantly monitor what she is doing. We’ve caught her with her Chromebook in bed a couple of nights too and so we’ve had blanket and dictatorial confiscation of the Chromebook – which I’m on the fence as to whether it’s the best strategy since it leads to a lot of tantrums and generally unpleasant behavior (on both our parts), but it’s the easiest tactic to implement. I think there just needs to be some kind of joint discussion about screen time and Chromebook use and expectations. Also maybe have her show us what she’s using the Chromebook for. I think right now, the parents are the enemy in the screen time battle, and I don’t like that dynamic.

Plans /Aspirations for this weekend:
– Drag Queen Story Hour at the Botanical Gardens. The three year old keeps calling it “Dragon Story Hour”. I hope she isn’t disappointed.
– Birthday Party at a bowling alley for a classmate of the five year old.
– Work. It’s closing night! I’m a little sad.
– Order a new planner for next year. I use a weekly planner and I just realize there are only six spreads left for this year. When I think of the rest of the year in terms of just six spreads, it seems like the year is fast disappearing.
– Run.
– Maybe a hike. Something outdoors for sure.
– Think/ Plan holiday/ end of year things.

Looking forward to:
-Happy Hour with my mom’s group next week. I think only one or two moms can make it this time, but it’s been a while since we had one, so I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.
– This is way in the future, but our Spring Break Trip!
– Another Date Day with the Husband. He took half a day off this week to work in his garden, and we spent half an hour watching Only Murders in the Building and eating chocolate bars. It felt very un-adult like. Looking forward to more like that.

What We Ate:
Saturday: I was solo with the kids, so we had snack dinner – Soy Sauce Eggs, Veggies, Fruit, Edemame, crackers and cheese. Eaten on the floor while watching Thundermans.

Sunday: I had a matinee show, so the Husband made dumplings and cut up some veggies for the kids. They saved me some dumplings, which I ate when I got home.

Monday: Camping. Trying to keep it super simple – boxed Mac n Cheese with hot dogs and broccoli mixed in. A tip I learned from my brother is to buy the Deluxe Mac N Cheese; it come with a cheese sauce rather than cheese powder, so it’s easier to make. And then of course ‘Smores for dessert.

Tuesday: The five year old requested veggie noodle soup, so I made Chickpea Noodle Soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone Cookbook. It’s actually a great pantry soup.

Wednesday: I had to work so I had empanadas and dolmas from the Farmer’s Market by work. The Husband made some kind of hashbrown/peppers/egg skillet for the kids.

Thursday: This was the day that I kind of lost it and told the kids that if they didn’t empty the dishwasher, we’d have toast for dinner because I wasn’t going to dirty anymore dishes until I could put them in the dishwasher afterwards. Well, joke’s on me. The dishwasher did not get emptied in time so we had bagels and baba ghanoush, and carrots and cucumbers and hummus, and fruit. Everyone thought it was a great dinner. So much for natural consequences.

Friday: Pizza (take-out) and The Secret Lives of Super Pets, which was a pretty funny movie.

Weekly recap + what we ate: did/done/to do

This was a very light work week, so I tried to shake off my post tech malaise and get some life admin done. I liked Elisabeth’s comment earlier this week about only putting five things on the to do list, moreover some of those five things can be entirely routine things… I always had thought that the to do list was above and beyond the routine things I do, but putting the everyday things seem to sort of help kick start the list with some low hanging fruit. So this week, my low hanging fruit was “get outside or exercise for at least 15 minutes every day,” and “Make dinner for the family.”

On top of that, things that got checked off my list this week:
– Paid the bills. One of them quite late. I need a better system.
– Scheduled parent teacher conference for all three kids. I think we will have to do them online this year, which I don’t love, but I had to schedule them at times when I would have to find a sitter for the kids if we went in person. I’m grateful that we are offered both a virtual and in person option, though.
– Zappos return on shoes that I had been on the fence about.
-Zappos order on black shoes to try.
-ordered leggings, since the one pair I currently have won’t cut it for the whole winter.
-VOTED! Voting feels pretty perfunctory where I am because my county leans so heavily Democratic. Most of the tough decisions are during the primary. There were a few items that I had to do some reading up on – ballot measures (including legalizing cannabis) and Board of Education seats, which are non-partisan. Overall it took the better half of a day to read up on candidates and watch some forums, filled out my mail in ballot and dropped it off at a polling center. I used to just do early voting, but even then I would always leave it for the very last minute and on that last day the lines were always so long. I like the mail in ballot because I can take my time and fill it in while having the internet in front of me and do my research as I fill out my bubbles. Also – this time they sent and “I Voted” sticker with the mail in ballot. Not gonna lie, but for me, the sticker was a huge perk of voting in person and I was always sad not to get one when voted by mail.
-used this website to measure myself for a bra. Which is just step one to my bigger goal of actually getting new bras.
-Hosting a friend for dinner. I had forgotten how nice it is to have a friend over for dinner. Moreover, a friend that doesn’t judge your messy, post-Hallowe’en house that is never quite picked up, and who also engages with your kids in real conversations.

Things that weren’t on a list, but I’m glad I made time for:
-Getting my car an oil change, and then running part of the way home. I think I only ended up running 1.5 miles out of the 3 miles between home and the mechanics, but I did run all of that 1.5 miles in one go, which is the longest stretch I’ve run since I started running a year ago. The car was probably 900 miles overdue for an oil change, and when i went to pick it up my mechanic said, “You’re still driving that thing?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I hope I get to drive it for a while longer.”
And he said, “People love their Subarus. Well just keep bringing it in to me for oil changes regularly and it will last a while longer.”
The car is 179K and 19 years old. The Husband tells me that it is worse for the environment than getting a new car.
-Walk with friend to a cafe for lunch then walk home. Good conversations, an iced chai, lunch and fall colour. Seems like a pretty good fall morning.
-Trip to library. I initially went to pick up some holds, but then started browsing and before I knew it, I had an armful of books to bring home. I do a lot of reading via the Libby app, and I forget that there is something so wonderful about browsing the library, pulling books off the bookshelves, reading the jacket, flipping through them while inhaling the smell of paper and past readers. eBooks just don’t that that softly worn community feeling that hard copy books off a library bookshelf do.
– Post library trip to Botanical Gardens where I sat for an hour and scrolled and read two chapters of a freshly borrowed book in 70 degree weather. This felt very indulgent.

-Walk with Husband. One day, I suggested to the Husband we do something in the scant half hour between him getting off work and the school bus pick up. We decided to go for a walk at a nearby trail where we took our picture at the selfie stand there:

Things that didn’t get checked off my to do list:
– make/ formulate a plan for camping next week.
– sweater return from last year. Last Christmas, the Husband had bought me some Irish wool sweaters, but they were too small. There is a 365 day return window, but the customs forms to return them are so daunting that I haven’t done this yet.
-Mail thank you present to a friend.
– Some financial things that I just need to square away, but which is tedious and requires a bit of research and persistence and gathering of information. This is under the category of important but not urgent, so I procrastinate. But I know if I procrastinate too much it will fall under the category of “urgent” so I just need to get over that hump.

Looking forward to:
– The end of Daylights saving! My kids are naturally early risers so I hold no illusion that I will get another hour of sleep. What really excites me about the clocks falling back is that it will no longer be dark outside when I take the ten year old to her 7:15am piano lessons.
-Date day next week with the Husband. In September I went to Glenstone Museum with my mother and cousin and liked it so much that when tickets were released for this month, I immediately snagged two tickets for November 11th, which the Husband has off as it is Veteran’s Day. The kids will be in school, so we will have a child free date day!
– On the issue of dates- we are having a new sitter come this weekend to watch the kids while I’m at work since the Husband is going to be away. I’m excited for the potential of finding a regular sitter. We haven’t hired childcare help since the baby was six months old. I never know where to begin with hiring help, so I waffle and don’t do it. But I knew we would need a sitter for the kids this weekend so I asked the moms in my mom’s group and someone recommended this person. I hope it works out because the Husband and I need more date nights.
-Two days of no school. The kids have two days off school next week. One day is an end of quarter planning day for teachers and the next day is Election Day. I know it’s a strange thing to be excited for two days with the kids at home, but ever since they all started at school I’ve missed having adventures with them.

Something I read this week that made me think:
I found this blog post from 2009 by Arts Administrator Adam Thurman “An Open Letter to Arts Administrators” very inspiring (h/t to Butts in Seats, a very thoughtful blog about arts administration and how the arts fits into the lives of everyone.) Thurman presents some thoughts and advice on how arts administrators, often an invisible presence and often taken for granted, need to stand up for themselves.
Thurman’s post is from 2009, but it still feels really relevant, especially in the post COVID world when we are seeing a lot of attrition in the arts world (and I’m sure many industries). Now I’m not an arts administrator and I’m not really an artist, so I do feel like I straddle this line between creating the art and producing the art – that is to say developing an environment in which people can bring art to stage, and being part of the art itself. I think people on both sides of the equation are burnt out and need change, but change is hard in an industry drenched in tradition and convention. Yet, as Thurman writes:
“It doesn’t have to be like that. I know you’ve probably convinced yourself that all the garbage you deal with is just the cost of being in the field.
It isn’t.”
Also this thought:
“This thing you love, the arts . . . it is your world too. It’s your world just as much as it belongs to any poet, any dancer, any actor.“
This is a good reminder – I think, as a stage manager, I often feel like what I do is in service of the product onstage, but I need to remind myself that I am also “the talent”. I might not be a big opera star, but I am a person brought in to do a very specific thing and the “service” portion of my job does not negate the “arts” portion of my job. I do this because I believe that opera should be presented for an audience. I don’t do this just to be a cog in the opera machine.
I think what struck me the most about Thurman’s article is his insistence that you can love working in the arts, believe passionately in what you do, but also make a living wage and have a good work/life balance. He really challenges the idea of suffering for one’s art.

Something amazing: While grocery shopping the other day, I wandered into the “British aisle.” This is where I get my sub-par winegums. But also on the shelf was:

Now I have never seen a Coffee Crisp in a grocery store in the US so this was pretty special. I immediately texted the Husband. He asked if I bought some. I said no because the Coffee Crisp we brought back from Montreal two months ago was still sitting in our shelf. That was a bad move, though. When the Husband popped in after work, there were none left.

Something beautiful. The foggy weather continues, and this morning the fog was so thick I had to drive super slow. Fog is such a pain to drive through, but it is so fleetingly beautiful.

What We Ate:

Saturday: Opening night. I had a salad from the work Canteen. The family ordered sushi.

Sunday: I can’t remember, though I do think it involved scrounging through the fridge and a bit ingenuity.

Monday: Hallowe’en and I had to work. I think the kids had wings and candy at our friend’s house. I had leftover sushi.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday. I made carnitas in the slow cooker, finished off under the broiler. We ate this with lots of toppings: red cabbage slaw, picked red onions, guacamole, salsa, cilantro. The carnitas recipe was adapted from the cookbook Taco Loco, even though the recipe called for roasting in the oven for four hours, I had to go to work, so I threw it in the slow cooker, and it turned out perfectly.

Wednesday: Warm Winter Vegetable Salad with Halloumi. From this Bon Appetit recipe. This was a really simple and tasty recipe. Good way to use up the squash. Basically toss squash, cabbage, onions together with olive oil and Aleppo pepper (I just used paprika and chipotle pepper). Roast on high heat for 20 mins. Add cubed Halloumi and torn up pieces of pita. Roast another 15 minutes util the pita is crispy. Garnish with mint and a drizzle of red wine vinegar. Enjoy.

Thursday: Curry Noodles and Terriyaki veggies from the Bad Manner Cookbook. Also some pan fried tofu alongside. Vegan.

Friday: Pizza and Movie, I’m guessing? I had to work so had leftover curry noodles for dinner.

Weekly Recap + What we ate: Tech week and Opening Night

This weekend was opening night! Yay! We made it. It’s actually been a pretty chill tech week, a gazillion flights of stairs, notwithstanding. It helps that the show is short (100 minutes!) and there is only one set look, so no complicated scene shifts to have to co-ordinate backstage. I’m sure the show it plenty challenging for our lead soprano who is onstage for practically the whole show, however.

I spent much of my time at work this week lightwalking – which is when someone (usually the assistant stage managers) stands onstage while the lighting designer sets the lighting looks. You can read about lightwalking in a previous post of mine here. Lightwalking can be tedious, but I got some good reading done while standing under the lights. Currently reading these two books:

I’m a little on the fence about Dava Shastri’s Last Day – the ideas behind it are touching, but the execution is a little clunky. Lindy West’s book, is hilarious – I’ve been reading bits of it out loud to the Husband and sometimes I can’t continue because I’m laughing too hard.

On the home front, however, things felt kind of like a mess… I stayed up super late while the kids were gone and never seemed to get back into a good sleep routine. Every morning seemed like a struggle. In addition to the great effort it’s been taking to even just get out of bed, the ten year old also has signed up for a Novel Writing Club at school, as part of National Novel Writing Month, and the club meets twice a week at 8:15am. I’m really excited that she’s undertaking the club, but an 8:15am drop off makes for very choppy mornings. I have to get all three kids in the car at 8:10am, to be able to take the ten year old to writing club. After I drop her, I come home with the younger two kids and we have about 25 minutes before I have to do the school bus run for the middle kid. I’d like to find a way to make those 25 minutes feel like well used time, but I’m not sure quite what that would be yet. Do I want it to be time where I try to fit in a short yoga session? Or is it time to snuggle and read with the littles? Or time to get ahead with house chores? I think ideally I would love to spend that 25 minutes journaling since I’ve gotten a little out of that habit, but I find journaling hard with the two little kids around since they like to hang out with me when we are at home.

As always happens after opening night, I’m feeling a little disoriented, and feel like I need to find a little bit of focus to put life back in order – both our physical space since the house is a mess, and our non-physical things like paying the bills and dealing with small house projects. Tech week is always so intense and all consuming that I feel like I need a week to just sleep for days, but I also feel like that’s so self indulgent – I mean plenty of people hold down very intense jobs all the time without the reprieve of opening night. I think what I really need is to focus and think through some systems and routines to put in place now that my schedule has opened up, so that I can balance rest and things that fill up my cups and the adulting things that have to get done.

Anyhow, other things from this week:

– Hallowe’en is around the corner! I’ve been feeling a little unprepared for Hallowe’en this year. I didn’t carve a pumpkin, which makes me a little sad, but I think I’m the only one who really cares. We don’t actually get very many (or actually any) trick or treaters, so the decorative aspects of Halloween tend to fall by the wayside unless I really make an effort. And being in the thick of tech week, it just didn’t feel like a priority this year. Plus, I’m working Hallowe’en night, so I’m not feeling as motivated to be as involved as I usually like to be. I did manage to finish the ten year old’s Hallowe’en costume this weekend. Here’s a sneak peek:

Any guesses? All will be revealed after trick or treating! I’m a little sad to miss trick or treating with the kids, but the Husband has promised to take pictures.

-Rides home with my friend. I have a very good friend at work who lives two miles from me. She doesn’t always work the same hours as me, but lately, she’s texted me before work and asked if I wanted a ride home after work since she was working the same shift as me. So on those days I take the Metro in to work and then my friend gives me a ride home. I love this arrangement for two reasons: 1) Metro ride means time to read on my commute. Also it’s much cheaper to ride the Metro in to work than to pay for parking. and 2) Rides home are almost like date night with my friend. Since we both work for the opera, during the busy season we never get to have friend dates. Getting to ride home together has been so much fun – we chat and gossip and trade parenting stories and ideas. It’s been a highlight of my week.

– Trying to soak in the fall colours:

-More fall delights:

We don’t have trees in our backyard, so a big pile of fall leaves is quite a novelty to the kids. We were walking around our neighborhood this weekend, when the kids spotted a big pile of leaves, and instinctively they knew just what to do. After we moved into our current treeless house, I realized I don’t miss having to do leaf clean up every year – or rather the Husband is the one who does it – but I do miss having big pile of leaves to play in.

– One day this week – the serendipity of having the Wordle match the World:

-Office essentials for tech week:

The note, left for us by the stage managers of the opera that is performing on opposite nights as us, says “No Trains – but something calming and fun” and is in reference to the train set that we had set up in our rehearsal space office. And this little puzzle has indeed provided a nice brain shift in the midst of a very busy week. And of course, all the snacks – so essential.

– One day the afternoon bus was an hour late. Turns out the shortage of bus drivers is creating a situation where bus drivers have to drive more than one route, often returning to school to pick up kids between routes. There were definitely some very frustrated parents at the bus stop because there was a lack of forthcoming information. While waiting, I snapped this picture of the trees across the street, thinking, “Well at least I have pretty trees to look at!”

– Something touching:

On the nights when I don’t make it home until bedtime, there has been lately a toothbrush prepped for me when I get home. Apparently the baby insists on prepping me a toothbrush as she is doing toothbrushes for the other kids. I find it so sweet. Of course by the time I get home, the toothpaste has dried out and hardened a little bit, but I still use it anyway and feel immensely loved. Also it makes it so much harder to get mad at the toothpaste art all over the counter.

What we ate: I wasn’t home a lot this week for dinner, but we still managed a few good home-cooked meals.

Saturday: This was part of child free weekend, so I didn’t really have real meals. Funny how keeping the kids fed is the main motivation for regular meal times at out house. I cleaned out the fridge and at some probably questionable leftovers. Then supplemented with popcorn and a cherry coke at the movies

Sunday: I worked this night so I’m pretty sure I brought leftovers.

Monday: the Husband and kids came home while I was at work. The ten year old made mac n cheese from the blue box, and the Husband steamed some broccoli. I had leftovers at work.

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday… I prepped Butternut squash and poblanos for the Husband. When he got home, he roasted them and mixed it with a can of black beans. They ate that with tortillas and guacamole. It’s the Sweet Potato Taco recipe from Dinner Illustrated, with butternut squash subbed for Sweet potatoe

Wednesday: i was home and we had Indonesian fried rice with Brussel Sprouts, steamed edamame and shrimp on the side. The fried rice is something that everyone groans when I tell them that’s for dinner, but then love it, Brussel sprouts and all. Along with the fried rice, I steamed some edamame and we also ate some leftover shrimp that the Husband had brought home from a fancy restaurant from Queens:

Shrimp in Queens. This is the picture from the restaurant where the Husband and the kids had dinner one night.

Thursday: the Husband brought the ten year old to the opera to see the final dress rehearsal of my show. They ate at the cafe at the theater. I made turkey meatballs in the Instant Pot for my dad to feed the two little kids that evening. These were the same meatballs that I had made last week, and at that time, I had also made a batch to put in the freezer for Future Me, which proved fortuitous.

Friday: Pizza and Hocus Pocus. I had never seen Hocus Pocus, and being as how Halloween is around the corner, I thought that it would be a good option for movie night. It was not at all what I expected; there wasn’t as much plot as I thought there would be.

Weekly Recap + What We Ate: A night at the opera!

Well, the Husband has taken the kids to New York for the weekend, so I have a childfree couple of days. Wow. I didn’t go with them because I was working, though I did contemplate going up for the one day I had off, but then decided to just enjoy the time to myself.

It’s kind of intimidating looking at the blank slate – I mean it’s almost noon and I just pulled myself out of bed. Last night I came home from rehearsal at 11:30pm, spent about 45 minutes scrolling my phone, then cleaned the kitchen until 1:30am. Part of me said I should go to be early, but part of me – wired a little from the evening’s rehearsal – thought cleaning the kitchen and listening to podcasts was the perfect activity to do when no one else was at home asleep.

Some moments this week:

-I bought a sled. We have never had a sled which is fine except for the one week that we get enough snow for sledding. The past years I’ve had the kids sled in plastic bins and cardboard boxes, but I’ve really wanted a sled. The big issue is storage. This week, I was at a consignment sale that a local pre-school does as a fund raiser and they had a sled – a really sturdy Rubbermaid sled. In fact, my good friend has this sled from her childhood and her kids still use it. I was still on the fence about it, so I told myself if it was still there the next day, which was half price day, I would buy it. I went back the next day, and it was still there, marked down to $8. I had just enough cash to buy it, after I stocked up on some other clothes for the kids. Actually – I had to use my lucky $2 bill to buy it. I have a $2 bill that I don’t remember where I got it from, but it’s been in my wallet for a few years now. After they rang me up, I was one dollar short to buy the sled. And I thought… well what use is a $2 bill just hanging out in my wallet? So I handed over the $2 bill and took the sled home. Now that I’ve used my lucky $2 bill, it’s probably not going to snow this year… but this thing is built like a tank so maybe my grandchildren will use it.

I texted this picture to the Husband and wrote, “You don’t even have to know it’s in the house.”

-The baby continues to sleep erratically. One night this week she got into bed with me about 3am and started to cry and cry and cry. She kept saying that she wanted to show me her picture. I had no clue what she was talking about, and at 3am decoding baby was not really a priority. I eventually went back to sleep and I think she did too… it’s all kind of hazy. The next morning we get up do our morning thing, and then when I go into her room, I see on the bunk beds:

Sigh. This is why we can’t have nice things.

That was her picture. She was so proud of it. She even pointed out the W she made in the top right hand corner. (W is the first initial of her name). I did manage to remove it with rubbing alcohol, though the Husband said he had been reluctant to clean it off because she was so happy with it. I’m now contemplating maybe some kind of peel and stick whiteboard? But of course if I do that it will instantly render the surface uninteresting and she will move on.

-We went to the opera! All of us, including the kids. I don’t really have a regular sitter, and the Husband and I wanted to see the opera that the baby did the video shoot for. So I thought maybe we should all just go. The ten year old loves going to the opera, and I thought it would be fun for the baby and the five year old to see the results of the video shoot. We didn’t stay until the end because we didn’t want to be out too late with the kids, but we stayed for 3/4 of the opera. The theatre even had booster cushions for the kids – which I hadn’t realized they did. Now I know for next time! It was fun to see the three year old as a huge silhouette onstage – I could tell it was her by her wild hair. Watching the opera, she was a little fidgety, and said the opera was scary, but otherwise did really well. (I mean the opera is about witches and burning women and babies, so maybe she has a point… we did not stay for what I hear was a severed head at the end.) The five year old seemed really into it, and was actually upset at having to leave early. Though he did say at intermission that he wanted to leave so maybe he just really didn’t want to go to bed when we really left. I did bribe the two little kids with lollipops to get them to sit for the second half. The singing was beautiful, and music thrilling, and I thought the tenor’s Act 3 aria was stunning. All in all, I would say a successful family venture to the opera!

Booster cushions in tow! Going to the opera!

– I had a bit of a meltdown on Monday when I went to get my bike out of the shed to go to work, and I couldn’t find the key to the shed. I (embarrassingly) called the Husband, railed at him for a little bit, then felt defeated and went upstairs to change out of my biking clothes and into work clothes and drove to work. I had planned out my bike rides depending on this week’s rehearsal schedule, and there were really only two days that would work to bike, so I was super disappointed and frustrated when I couldn’t bike to work. Anyhow… I did manage to run three times on my dinner break and bike one way on one other day, so I guess I still feel pretty good about the amount of exercise I got.

-Speaking of running – some gorgeous skies and colours during my dinner break runs this week:

There was also one house that had a wish tree out front, and people wrote wishes and hung them from the tree. I especially enjoyed this combination:

In case you can’t read it, the red tag says, “That One Direction gets back together.” The Yellow once says, “Be Connected to my Community.”

-And speaking of exercise: Friday was our first tech rehearsal in the theatre. A day that is always super busy where I’m on my feet all day, running around the stage and theatre. I looked at my Health app on the phone, and yesterday’s stats:

I feel like the number of steps/ distance is about right for a day of tech. Though 2 miles of that was my dinner break run. The 34 floors, however, is more than normal. I do often climb a lot of stairs during tech – our office is in the lower level of the theatre and there is a rehearsal room on the 2nd floor. This tech however was a lot more because our set has two levels and there are a lot of singers and dancers going up to the second level and coming back down, so I was running up and those steps a lot to cue them onstage or to deal with issues. Plus the stage itself a platform about two and a half feet up from the floor of the theatre so even just stepping on stage is 1/3 a flight of stairs. And I went on stage a lot yesterday.
I always think it’s fun to look at these metrics as how they reflect in the day. The dip between 12n-1p was lunch break when we sat on the back terrace and enjoyed the fresh air and view of the Potomac. The spike between 5p-6p was when I went for my dinner break run. The spike in flights climbed between 8pm and 9pm was probably that part in rehearsal when one of the singers left a sword on top of the second story of the set and then we couldn’t find it so I ran up and down the steps five times looking for it because I though it might have gotten kicked off the platform and I was worried that it was under the set. (Someone else had retrieved it and put it on the prop table.)
Anyhow, I always think it’s fun to look at the data from tech and compare it with other techs.

Something I read that made me think this week: This article about digital detoxing and technology norms in a collective society. The article talks about how and why the idea of a “digital detox” has come into our vocabulary and made me really think about the amount of time I spend on my phone. Well, not strictly the time that I spend on my phone, but rather the material I consume while on my phone, and how that reflects who I am. The author is a media studies professor and she writes:
“Studying digital-media breaks can reveal what individuals and collectives value in unmediated spaces, and the measures they take to protect it.”
I’ve been thinking lately about this idea of the offline values that I want to protect. I was looking back on my five year journal and I realized that it was this time last year that I decided to take a break from Facebook because I felt like it was a time suck. Now I don’t necessarily spend less time on my phone, but I think I spend different time on my phone. I read more books. I read and comment on more blogs. I play Wordle and DuoLingo. I still scroll a lot of stuff in Feedly and spend too much time researching purchases and go down internet rabbit holes. I think, though, if I can remember the things that I find fulfilling and satisfying offline, then it will help me be more purposeful with the time I do spend on my phone. So if I value things like connecting with people, stimulating my mind, doing something physical – I will use technology to do those things, guard them and prioritize them, and be more cognizant of when random scrolling doesn’t check those boxes.

Anyhow, my weekend aspirations so far:
– Wash my bras. I, sadly, only have two bras that are currently comfortable and they both need a washing. (They are nursing bras, but are so comfortable that I still wear them. Though I do truly need new bras.) Anyhow his is kind of the sad state of affairs where I have to put “wash bras” on a list to remember to do it.
– Pick up the house. Cleaners are coming Monday, and we always do a tidy before they come. Which usually involves lots of screaming, bribing , and withholding things from the children. Well, they aren’t home this weekend, so let’s see if it will be any less stressful to just do it all myself while they are gone.
– a yoga or a gentle strength workout video. I ran three times this week, plus tech last night, so I’m feeling like something on the short and easy side this weekend.
– ten year old’s Halloween costume. Perpetual October task.
-put oil in my car. It is due for an oil change, but I don’t see that happening for another week, so this is the stop gap measure.
-sleepover with my friend. We might go see a movie (This one with Cate Blanchett as a charismatic conductor. right up our music nerd alley.) Or we might just stay home and have an in home movie night.
-Hike and picnic with sleepover friend.
-Work Sunday Night.
-random internet chores – bills, activity sign ups, still on the quest for black shoes

What We Ate:

Saturday: Hot Pot Restaurant (mentioned last post)

Sunday: Chipotle and Papa Johns at Friend’s house.

Monday: Turkey Meatballs loosely from this Smitten Kitchen Recipe. I didn’t do the broth part; I just premade the meatballs and marinated the squash so the Husband could just toss it all on a sheet pan when he got home and they ate it with pasta. I made a double batch of the meatballs and froze them, which I think future me will thank me for. This was really tasty – I ate it cold when i got home from work and the kids took the leftovers for lunch the next day. The three year old, who says “I don’t like vegetables!” ate all of her yellow squash and then some, but refused to eat the zucchini because it was green.

Tuesday: I had leftovers at work – the last of the mushroo wild rice soup from a week and a half ago. The Husband took the kids to dinner with a friend.

Wednesday: We went to the Opera this night and ate at the terrace cafe at the theatre, which is always pricy, but the food is good and I get a tiny discount. I had a Cioppino which straddled the line between briny and salty.

Thursday: The family had leftover pizza – something easy as they were packing for their trip. I had some kind of leftovers grabbed from the fridge. I’ve started packaging the leftovers in smaller containers when possible so I can just grab them out of the fridge on my way to work.

Friday: Husband and kids were away. I brought a kale salad for dinner – Massaged kale, roasted butternut squash, almonds, avocado, cucumbers, radishes, cheddar cheese, olive oil, salt, shallots, lemon. It was really tasty. And a good way to clean out the vegetable drawer.